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Barbara currently co-directs Animating Democracy, a program of Americans for the Arts, Institute for Community Development and the Arts, funded by the Ford Foundation. Launched in fall 1999, Animating Democracy's purpose is to foster artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue on important contemporary issues. Barbara has worked as a consultant since 1990, and prior to that she served as executive director of the Arts Extension Service at the University of Massachusetts where she was on staff for 13 years. Her work with partner Pam Korza includes program design and evaluation for state and local arts agencies and private foundations nationally. Projects include strategic plans for the Heinz Endowment's Arts and Culture programs and the New York State Council on the Arts, a 20-year review of the North Carolina Arts Council's Grassroots Arts Program, and cultural plans for Northampton, MA, and Rapid City, SD. Barbara has written, edited, and contributed to several publications, including the revised edition of *Fundamentals of Local Arts Management* and *The Cultural Planning Work Kit*, published by the Arts Extension Service. She is an arts management educator, serving as a primary instructor for the "Fundamentals and Advanced Management" seminars, guest lecturer for the New York University Graduate Program in Arts Management, and a senior faculty member for the Empire State Partnerships' Summer Institute in arts education. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Barbara has served as a panelist and adviser for many state and national arts agencies. She is president of the Arts Extension Institute, Inc., a board member of the Fund for Women Artists, and chair of her local school committee.

Christos Papadimitriou is C. Lester Hogan professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He was won numerous international awards for his pioneering work in computational complexity and algorithmic game theory. He has written the novel *Turing: A Novel about Computation*.

Ann Hamilton is a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surrounds of her large-scale multi-media installations. Noted for a dense accumulation of materials, her liminal environments create immersive experiences that poetically respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites. Born in Lima, Ohio in 1956, Hamilton received a BFA in textile design from the University of Kansas in 1979 and an MFA in Sculpture from the Yale University School of Art in 1985. Among her many honors, she has been a recipient of the Heinz Award, MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, NEA Visual Arts Fellowship and United States Artists Fellowship and was chosen to represent the United States at the 48th Venice Biennale. Most recently, she has participated in The Third Mind exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York with human carriage, a site-specific commission installed along the spiral ramp of the museum. Presently, she is working on several public art projects and is preparing for a 2010 project installation at the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis.

Harriet Reisen is a former fellow in screenwriting at the American Film Institute, Reisen has written dramatic and historical documentary scripts for PBS and HBO, and radio commentary for *Morning Edition* and *Marketplace*. She has been interested in Louisa May Alcott since her childhood marathon reading of Alcott's eight young adult novels. She has written a documentary of the life of Louisa May Alcott to be aired on PBS, for which *Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women* is a companion biography.

Stephen Dubner is an award-winning writer and journalist whose work has appeared in numerous major publications over the years, including *The New York Times*, *The New Yorker*, and *The Washington Post*. His has written several previous books, including *Choosing My Religion: A Memoir of a Family Beyond Belief* (originally published as *Turbulent Souls*), *Confessions of a Hero-Worshiper* and the international bestseller *Freakonomics*, which he co-wrote with Steven Levitt. His awards include the inaugural Quill Award for best business book, a Visionary Award from the National Council on Economic Education, a BookSense Book of the Year Award , all for *Freakonomics*. He also had both *Turbulent Souls* and *Freakonomics* chosen as Notable Books of the Year by *The New York Times*, in 1998 and 2005 respectively.

Danuta Borchardt is an award-winning translator from Polish to English. After a lengthy career in clinical psychiatry she turned to translation with an English edition of Witold Gombrowicz's novel *Ferdydurke*, for which she was awarded the National Translation Award in 2001, from the American Literary Translators Association. She has also written short stories, which have been published in *Exquisite Corpse*.

Lisa Rosner is professor of history at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She is the author of *The Most Beautiful Man in Existence: The Scandalous Life of Alexander Lesassier*.

D.D. Guttenplan, the author of The Nation: A Biography is the magazine’s longtime London correspondent and co-editor of the Nation’s 150th anniversary special issue. His previous book, American Radical:The Life and Times of I.F. Stone was awarded the 2010 Sperber Prize for Biography. His first book, The Holocaust on Trial, was described by the New Yorker as “a mixture of superb reportage and serious reflection.” He produced the acclaimed documentary film Edward Said: The Last Interview and is a frequent commentator on American culture and politics for the Guardian and the BBC.

Mary Karr is an award-winning poet and best-selling memoirist. She is the author of *Lit*, the sequel to her critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling memoirs *The Liars' Club* and *Cherry*. A sought-after speaker, Karr has given distinguished talks at prestigious universities, libraries, and writers' festivals, including Harvard University, Oxford University, Princeton University, Brown University, Syracuse University ("On Salmon Rushdie" with Salmon Rushdie), the New York Public Library, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Folger Library (Poetry Society of America/Emily Dickinson Lecture), The New Yorker Literary Festival, PEN/Faulkner, and the Festival of Faith and Writing.

Michael Goldfarb has been one of public radio's most familiar voices from London: first as NPR's London correspondent and later bureau chief; then as the senior correspondent for the public radio program *Inside Out*. His book on the conflict, *Ahmad's War, Ahmad's Peace: Surviving Under Saddam, Dying in the New Iraq*, was named one of the *New York Times*' Notable Books of 2005. He has also received the Overseas Press Club's Lowell Thomas Award for Outstanding Radio Journalism, the duPont-Columbia Silver Baton and two Edward R. Murrow Awards.

Lidia Mattichio Bastianich is one of the best-loved chefs on public television, a best-selling cookbook author, restaurateur, and owner of a flourishing food and entertainment business. Her current PBS series, *Lidia's Italy*, has garnered numerous accolades, including the 2009 James Beard Award for Best Television Show. Her latest cookbook, the lushly illustrated *Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy*, complements the TV series and provides an appetizing look into the regional cooking of many lesser-known parts of Italy. Her previous public TV credits include *Lidia's Family Table*, *Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen*, and *Lidia's Italian Table*. A proud grandmother of five, Lidia's ebullient approach to life and cooking is summed in her signature line, "Tutti a tavola a mangiare!" or "Everybody to the table to eat!"

Rana Husseini is a Jordanian journalist and human rights activist whose work focuses on social issues with a special emphasis on violence against women. She has received numerous awards for her reporting, including a medal from HM King Abdullah II of Jordan for her reporting on so-called crimes of honor. Through her work she helped form the National Jordanian Committee to Eliminate So-Called Crimes of Honor, and she has served as a regional coordinator with the United Nations Development Fund for Women's campaign to eliminate violence against women in five Arab countries.